Boris MannJekyll2018-08-08T20:54:01-07:00http://www.bmannconsulting.com/Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.com/boris@bmannconsulting.comhttp://www.bmannconsulting.com/blog/bmann/blog-bmann-snow-vancouver2016-08-30T00:00:00-07:002016-08-30T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/blog/bmann/snow-vancouver/">Blog Bmann Snow Vancouver</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 30, 2016.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/2473/drupal/2473-drupal-open-source-stands-together2016-06-06T00:00:00-07:002016-06-06T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/2473/drupal/open-source-stands-together/">2473 Drupal Open Source Stands Together</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on June 06, 2016.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/node/node-16162016-06-02T00:00:00-07:002016-06-02T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/node/1616/">Node 1616</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on June 02, 2016.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/migration2012-05-21T23:38:00-07:002012-05-21T23:38:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p>The <a href="/archive/welcome-to-b-mann-consulting/">first post</a> on this site running Drupal was November 9th, 2002. The next post was asking for a <a href="/archive/dream-cms/">Dream CMS</a>. I don’t think I’ve found it with <a href="http://octopress.org">Octopress</a>, but I’m having fun learning the ins and outs.</p>
<p>As of May 21st, I’ve migrated the bulk of the BMC site to Octopress, and am hosting it directly on Amazon S3. The source Drupal site is still up and running at <a href="http://omega8.cc">Omega8.cc</a>, which is still my recommendation for managed Drupal hosting that is relatively low on custom code (e.g. custom theme + a couple of modules or an install profile). <a href="http://www.getpantheon.com">Pantheon</a> or one of <a href="http://www.acquia.com">Acquia’s</a> hosting options are probably your best bet for larger scale custom Drupal web-app hosting.</p>
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<p>I setup the Amazon S3 hosting some time ago, using <a href="http://links.bmannconsulting.com/how-to-install-configure-octopress-on-a-mac-and-host-your-static-website-on-amazon-s3-1">a couple of blog articles</a> to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve up HTML pages directly, and to modify Octopress to include a rake command that deploys directly to S3.</p>
<p>Exporting the posts in Drupal to Octopress-compatible files was both difficult and easy. I fiddled around trying to get a proper local install that would work with the Jekyll / Ruby mysql gems and such. Long story short, here’s what you need to do:</p>
<ol>
<li>Export your Drupal database (e.g. via <a href="http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate">Backup &amp; Migrate module</a>)</li>
<li>Install mysql on your local machine - I used <a href="http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/">Homebrew</a></li>
<li>Import your database - create a local database and import your exported one</li>
<li>Run the Jekyll Drupal migrator
<code>ruby -rubygems -e 'require "jekyll/migrators/drupal"; Jekyll::Drupal.process("database", "user", "password")'</code></li>
</ol>
<p>Here is the modified Jekyll drupal.rb migrator I used. I’ve removed the refresh / redirect related generation on nodes, and I’ve added pulling tags / categories from Drupal:</p>
<noscript><pre>400: Invalid request
</pre></noscript>
<script src="https://gist.github.com/2766017.js"> </script>
<p>Note that this is for Drupal 6. See <a href="http://walkah.net/blog/new-year-new-blog/">walkah’s write-up</a> and <a href="https://github.com/walkah/walkah.net/blob/master/_import/drupal.rb">drupal.rb</a> for getting this to work in Drupal 7.</p>
<p>You’ll now have all of your posts in the _posts folder (in my case, over 2200 of them over 10 years!). I did all this in a “clean” Jekyll codebase, and then just copied the posts over into the Octopress install I already had running / deploying to S3.</p>
<p>I have lots of cleanup to do, but I’ve had lots of “collateral damage” over the years of moving between Drupal versions and hosts — meaning I’ve already left a trail of tears and broken links in my wake. I spent some time cross-posting between Posterous and my BMC Drupal site, so there is likely to be some back and forth shuffling.</p>
<p>I intend for this site to serve the following purposes:</p>
<ul>
<li>a front page that showcases / points to active content: currently, this is <a href="http://blog.bmannconsulting.com">my blog</a>, <a href="http://links.bmannconsulting.com">link blog</a>, and <a href="http://twitter.com/bmann">recent Twitter posts</a></li>
<li>a long term archive of content:</li>
<li>special projects: I currently have a couple of pages hanging out on the blog, but this will likely be a better home</li>
</ul>
<p>With Flickr starting to look a bit wobbly, I’m going to look at hosting images here directly as well, but that’s for future exploration.</p>
<h3 id="update-july-24-2014">Update July 24, 2014:</h3>
<p><a name="update-20140724"></a></p>
<p>I moved off of Octopress and onto “plain” <a href="http://jekyllrb.com">Jekyll</a>, using the <a href="http://mmistakes.github.io/so-simple-theme/">So Simple Theme</a>. I’m using <a href="http://dploy.io">Dploy</a> connected to a <a href="http://bitbucket.org">Bitbucket</a> private git repo to maintain the generated site on Amazon S3.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/migration/">Migration</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on May 21, 2012.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/buying-ponies-from-a-drupal-app-store2011-01-28T00:00:00-08:002011-01-28T00:00:00-08:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p style="text-align: center; "><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/800px-Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2.jpg" title="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><span style="font-size:10px;"><em>Is the Drupal App Store idea a great wave that will lift the Drupal community to new heights, or will it crush the community of code collaborators?</em></span></p>
<p>I'm glad we've gone beyond talking about whether <a href="http:http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/themes-and-modules-are-derivatives-and-should-be-licensed-under-the-gpl/">themes and modules should be GPL or not</a>. I think the <a href="http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&amp;tag=drupalappstore&amp;lang=all">drupalappstore</a> discussion is about being able to "fund developers" in a way that goes beyond their hours.</p>
<p>I encourage virtually every business I talk to – whether Drupal focused or not – to figure out a way to make revenue that goes beyond billing for hours. It's the only way to truly scale a business without the boom-and-bust cycles of consulting work.</p>
<p>The main thing that has people scared about the concept of a Drupal App Store (in its theoretical sense) is the fear that Drupal's open, collaborative nature will somehow go away. Counter examples like the Joomla community are held up as the way things will end up if we open this Pandora's Box of commercial tyranny.</p>
<p>In my never ending quest to see Drupal move in a more product-like direction, I think a Drupal App Store would be great for developers and great for end users. But let's define what we mean (or at least, what *I* mean), when I say Drupal App Store.</p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<h2>Funding new modules</h2>
<p>I don't want to talk about funding the creation of new modules. This is a solved problem.</p>
<p>I did the <a href="http://drupal.org/node/20301">first reverse bounty way back in 2005</a>, and there is a <a href="http://drupal.org/node/110998">raising money / reverse bounty page on Drupal.org</a> with links to various platforms that can help you do this. If you want to write a new module and need to get funded to buy yourself the time, then go this route.</p>
<p>For developers who aren't good at marketing, I recommend you build a team that can help you with that side of things. These days, there are larger companies that would be willing to fund the creation of modules "done right" so I don't see an issue raising (literally) tens of thousands of dollars this way.</p>
<p>With that out of the way, let's get to a few other points.</p>
<h2>You can sell GPL code</h2>
<p>See Drupal theme stores as one example. You use a combination of copyrighted material (graphics, CSS, etc.) along with GPL PHP code and you can set whatever terms you like around the copyrighted material. Read the <a href="http://fusiondrupalthemes.com/license">Fusion Drupal Themes license</a> for an example of how to do this.</p>
<p>The other great example that I point to over and over again is <a href="https://www.bravenewcode.com/store/plugins/wptouch-pro/">BraveNewCode's WPtouch Pro™</a>. Once you've read about their product (or "app", if you will), read their <a href="http://www.bravenewcode.com/general/terms/">terms and conditions</a>. In essence, they are using the trademarked name of their WordPress plugin to protect their brand and reputation (which is ultimately what they are selling).</p>
<p>Conveniently, they are even using Drupal as an example – someone could take their code, adapt it to work with Drupal, change all the references to WPTouch Pro™, and so on.</p>
<p>I think this model would work for Drupal with virtually no changes, in terms of the legal pieces of "selling code". What customers are buying is some set of upgrade and support. The customer does this because they value the stability, function, features and so on of this piece of code, and want to support it.</p>
<h2>You need to be selling a complete piece of functionality (a pony)</h2>
<p>I think of the issues that people run into when thinking about what would be *in* a Drupal App Store, is they immediately think about Views or something similar. Some foundational piece of tech that they use all the time to build sites with.</p>
<p>I agree that this piecemeal approach to having to buy foundational elements to get the functionality that you need is not the right type of thing that would be easy to sell in an app store.</p>
<p>(on the other hand, I think someone could set up a Views support or site building support private forum and charge good money for it – this isn't that different from some of the paid training or video tutorial elements that are available today)</p>
<p>But I digress. What someone sells in a Drupal App Store needs to be a complete piece of functionality.</p>
<p>Eric Gundersen of Development Seed <a href="http://twitter.com/ericg/status/30613434223558656">mentioned</a> "I'd buy a map feature for my news site or photo gallery feature for wedding site". This is exactly the sort of drop in functionality that has high value for end users and can be relatively self contained.</p>
<p>And I use the term "end users" here rather loosely. The clients for a Drupal App Store will range from self-hosting enthusiasts who just want to complete their wedding site to design agencies that have limited in-house development resources and want to pay to have a supported solution for a client.</p>
<p>Everyone wants to be able to buy a pony. A set of functionality bundled up with a neat little bow in exactly the color you want is exactly what end users like.</p>
<p>How you bundle / deliver / update / ship this complete piece of functionality is up for discussion. It is a thorny technical issue that is … totally solvable. I happen to think that something like <a href="http://drupal.org/project/features">Features</a> actually *is* a much better fit for an "app" than selling a module.</p>
<h2>What about selling distributions and install profiles?</h2>
<p>I can't even tell you how overjoyed I am that <a href="http://angrylittletree.com/11/01/drupal-8-road-ahead">Eaton is proposing a push towards building a Drupal product codenamed 'Tsunami' for Drupal 8</a>. For one, I'm envisioning the Great Wave image above, only with unicorns instead of horses…</p>
<p>(again with the tangent)</p>
<p>To maintain and update great distributions over time, non-hourly client revenue needs to start coming from distributions.</p>
<p>Distributions are definitely NOT apps. They are both easier and harder. They are a single product that doesn't have to rely on a "host" Drupal site. On the harder side, the distribution developers need to track, test, and continually integrate a host of shifting module dependencies, make sure they're picking the "right" modules, and keep custom themes and functions up to date.</p>
<p>I would like to see the developers of distributions charge for something. Maybe it's a bundle of the distribution and some third party, proprietary web services bundled together. Maybe it's a private support forum. You're not really "selling" the distribution, but it mimics the traditional software model, so a lot of traditional organizations could actually pay for it (when they can't, for example, pay a donation).</p>
<h2>How do we "pay for the plumbing"?</h2>
<p>I swear I've also talked about this a million times. It probably needs a microsite, a manifesto to sign up for, and its own Twitter hashtag to really drive the point home.</p>
<p>Do you get paid to develop Drupal-powered websites for clients? Do you use contributed modules to build those sites?</p>
<p>I don't care if you are building a <a href="http://davehall.com.au/tags/100-drupal-site">$100 site</a> or a $100,000 site. If you are using contributed modules, set aside time or money to give back to the maintainers of those contributed modules.</p>
<p>It will save you money in the long run by investing in the modules that you've built code and themes around. Yes, if you fix a bug / submit a patch, that's paying as well, but it would be great to see actual dollars flowing into the contrib ecosystem.</p>
<p><strong>Everyone that uses Drupal to do paid work should have a costing model and internal policy that includes donating to the maintainers of every contributed module that they use on every site.</strong></p>
<p>What's a good formula to use for this? A percentage might be the most logical. 10% for Drupal contrib has a nice ring to it…</p>
<h2>Is a Drupal App Store a good idea?</h2>
<p>For me, the answer is actually…"no".</p>
<p>That is, I can tell you categorically that I *definitely* don't think it is a good idea to get the Drupal Association enmeshed in some sort of commercial venture to run such a store on drupal.org community infrastructure. We don't want to mix in commercial concerns directly in our community home.</p>
<p>But…</p>
<p>I think the concept of individual developers selling "apps" is a great idea. This may end up with someone deciding there is enough volume / value to set up some centralized store infrastructure, but that's kind of beside the point.</p>
<p>I think there are Drupal businesses out there, whether they are one person developers or full shops, who could make money selling Drupal apps in a model similar (if not identical) to how BraveNewCode sells WPtouch Pro™.</p>
<p>It still involves investment. It means doing marketing. It means creating and maintaining a great product (that basically comes first). But it also holds out the promise of value that end users are willing to pay for, and for a stream of revenue that is not directly tied to hours.</p>
<h2>Didn't you skip the whole discussion about how the Drupal community will collapse when money enters the picture?</h2>
<p>I think the centralized nature of modules and code collaboration on drupal.org is a very good thing. I don't think paid modules have a place there, and that is up to each vendor of apps to build their own reputation and show value for what they are selling on sites of their own.</p>
<p>I think a lot of the support load will actually go down.</p>
<p>Are you an end user having trouble with patches, development releases, etc.? Go grab the pro version that is fully supported.</p>
<p>Instead, issue queues can be filled with people doing what they always do: developers scratching itches together and evolving the code.</p>
<p>Remember: our underlying approach to this CMS that we've been building for over 10 years together has always been "let's build something that sucks less".</p>
<p>Even with apps for sale, this doesn't change. The developers of those apps will still get a better <a href="http:http://www.bmannconsulting.com/tags/#community ROI">community ROI</a> by investing in the framework layers that everyone can benefit from, and that end users don't care about anyway.</p>
<p>And like a Great Wave, that community investment will continue to raise us to new heights.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/buying-ponies-from-a-drupal-app-store/">Buying ponies from a Drupal App Store</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on January 28, 2011.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/movember-2010-and-iqmetrix-moustache-alliance2010-11-02T00:00:00-07:002010-11-02T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://iqmetrixmovember2010.eventbrite.com/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/iqmetrixmoustachealliance.jpg" title="" /></a></p>
<p>For the first time, I'm fully participating in <a href="http://ca.movember.com/">Movember</a>.</p>
<p>What is Movember? Movember is an annual event to raise awareness about and research funds for prostate cancer. The "Mo" refers to the fact that participants commit to starting the month clean shaven, and growing a moustache for the entire month of November. Along the way, funds are raised through a variety of activities to donate to Prostate Cancer Canada.</p>
<p>This is the first time I've been completely clean shaven for perhaps 4 or 5 years. One of the things that motivated me was that I now <a href="http://www.iqmetrix.com/article/2010/10/movember-2010-support-iqmetrix-moustache-alliance">work for a company/with co-workers that actively participates in and helps supports charitable giving and fundraising</a>. It's great to be surround by this type of energy, and I'm proud to be part of the <a href="http://ca.movember.com/mospace/22421/">iQmetrix Moustache Alliance</a>.</p>
<p>The second, and much more important reason, that I'm fully participating is to support my <a href="http://horst.wordpress.com">dad</a>. A couple of years ago he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was a hard and scary time for everyone, him most especially. It was diagnosed early, the cancer was treated, and he made a full recovery. In fact, he went on to <a href="http://horst.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/my-el-camino-a-view-from-today/">walk the Camino for the second time</a> (an 800km long walk that crosses most of Spain). I'm very glad to still have my dad in my life, and I hope everyone gets tested often and that better cures can be found.</p>
<p><img alt="" class="imagecache-thumb lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/thumb/postimages/a9edb96e17b48ed82947ded6e8c93eac_9784559.jpg" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: right; " title="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><strong>You can help by&nbsp;donating to <a href="http://ca.movember.com/mospace/566572/">my MoSpace page »</a></strong></p>
<p>Myself and the rest of the iQmetrix Moustache Alliance are putting on a fundraiser at our Vancouver office. You pay $20, and we will feed you, pour you a couple of beers from Howe Sound Brewing, and we'll have some moustache related fun. This Thursday, 6pm - 9pm, <a href="http://iqmetrixmovember2010.eventbrite.com/">register on Eventbrite »</a></p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://iqmetrixmovember2010.eventbrite.com?ref=ebtn" target="_blank"><img alt="Register for iQmetrix Moustache Alliance Fundraiser in Vancouver, British Columbia on Eventbrite" border="0" src="http://www.eventbrite.com/registerbutton?eid=990696199" /></a></p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<p>For more further pictures of my adventures in non-beardiness, I'm <a href="http://dailybooth.com/bmann">posting pictures to DailyBooth »</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/movember-2010-and-iqmetrix-moustache-alliance/">Movember 2010 and iQmetrix Moustache Alliance</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on November 02, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/grow-conference-video-interview2010-09-08T00:00:00-07:002010-09-08T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.techvibes.com/blog/techvibes-tv-boris-mann-of-bootup-labs-and-iqmetrix">Techvibes</a> and wonderful interviewer <a href="http://ca.linkedin.com/in/michellesklar">Michelle Sklar</a> for cornering me at <a href="http://growconf.com">GROWconf</a> for a quick chat about <a href="http://bootuplabs.com">Bootup</a>, the Vancouver startup scene, and my new role at <a href="http://iqmetrix.com">iQmetrix</a>.</p>
<p><object height="338" width="500"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14443385&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=ff9933&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;autoplay=0&amp;loop=0" /><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="338" src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14443385&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=ff9933&amp;fullscreen=1&amp;autoplay=0&amp;loop=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" /></object></p>
<p>Looking back, I realize I never posted anything about GROW here. Let me just say - it was fantastic. Thank you to the always fantastic Debbie Landa and the rest of the <a href="http://dealmakermedia.com/">Dealmaker Media</a> team for putting this together. Thank you to all the folks in from Toronto to Montreal to the Valley who got on planes and came. It was great to get the Canadian startup family together in one place for a few short days.</p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<p>I'll come back and pull in a few bullet points of a transcript. For now, I'm off to Regina to meet with more of the iQmetrix team.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/grow-conference-video-interview/">GROW Conference video interview</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on September 08, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/twitter-mentionmap-by-asterisq2010-09-06T00:00:00-07:002010-09-06T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><object height="480" width="580"><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" height="480" src="http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/main.swf?username=bmann" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" /></object></p>
<p>This is a "mention map" of people and hashtags that I mention on Twitter. You can <a href="http://asterisq.com/blog/2010/07/08/embed-mentionmap-in-your-website">get your own embed code</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://asterisq.com">Asterisq</a> is a local Vancouver company that is doing really interesting things with data visualization. Data visualization is an increasingly hot area, going from "neat!" to "wow, I would never have had this insight without seeing it like this".</p>
<p>The guys at Asterisq are looking for big data sets and partners to work with, so contact them if this sounds interesting. They've got a <a href="http://asterisq.com/products/constellation/custom/implementations">gallery of some other custom implementations of graphs</a>. Bonus points for <a href="http://asterisq.com/blog/2009/08/31/editable-graph-visualization-for-csis">Drupal integration</a> and also some <a href="http://asterisq.com/blog/2009/05/15/ultimate-movie-site-using-framework-for-facebook">Facebook integration</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/twitter-mentionmap-by-asterisq/">Twitter Mentionmap by Asterisq</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on September 06, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/automatic-wordpress-backup-using-amazon-s32010-08-26T00:00:00-07:002010-08-26T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><img alt="" class="lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/postimages/logo_aws.gif" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 164px; height: 60px; " title="" />I mentioned the <a href="http://www.webdesigncompany.net/automatic-wordpress-backup/">Automatic WordPress Backup plugin</a> briefly in my <a href="http://bmannconsulting.com/2885/web-development/standing-cloud-makes-cloud-hosting-app-container">post about Standing Cloud</a>. I've now installed and configured it, and aside from a few UI issues, it's great.</p>
<p>You'll need an <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/">Amazon Web Services</a> / S3 account to get started. Grab your access key and security key from the security credentials part of your account. Download / install the backup plugin (here it is <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/automatic-wordpress-backup/">on wordpress.org</a> - search inside WP for "automatic wordpress backup" and it should come up).</p>
<p>You choose what to backup. You really do want to check all the boxes -- your database, all your files, plugins, themes, uploaded content, etc. On the site in which I have it installed, each backup is about 100MB.</p>
<p>Backups are kept for a month and then deleted, and monthly backups are kept for a year. At 100MB / backup, that's about 3GB (plus a bit more for keeping those monthly backups). At Amazon S3's <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/">pricing</a> of 15¢ / GB, that's.... under 50¢ / month to have your site backed up every single day.</p>
<p>You can restore directly from within the interface as well, so this is a pretty turn key system. The UI is all in one page and a little clunky, and I did make some comments on what could be improved:</p>
<ul>
<li>In general, I would split the one big page into several tabs. A backups tab, a restore tab, and so on.</li>
<li>if you add a progress indicator, or in general display a floating message that says “backup in progress”, then people will understand that a backup is happening.</li>
<li>I would also do an immediate check against the access key / secret key and put in a green checkmark to indicate that it has connected correctly – with the secret key hidden, I’m always unsure if I’ve cut / pasted it correctly.</li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, what about <a href="http://vaultpress.com">VaultPress</a>, the commercial service? Well, in beta, they're charging $15 / month per blog at the Basic level, $40 / month for Premium. Or, um, 30x - 80x more expensive than doing it yourself with this plugin and Amazon S3. Their FAQ says that they are also doing security monitoring -- aka figuring out when your blog is hacked. And yes, most people are going to have to spend some time figuring out the Amazon interface and so on. But I really can't see how they can keep pricing at this level with this kind of free plugin available.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate">Backup Migrate</a> and <a href="http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate_files">Backup Migrate Files</a> module are the equivalent solution for Drupal, although I've always had trouble getting the files version to work with its PEAR dependency.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> <a href="http://justagwailo.com/">Richard</a> let me know that there is a <a href="http://drupal.org/node/715470">patch that fixes Backup Migrate Files</a>. Excellent, thanks!</p>
<p>Are you backing up your site automatically? Amazon S3 and plugins like those above make it automatic and inexpensive.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/automatic-wordpress-backup-using-amazon-s3/">Automatic WordPress Backup using Amazon S3</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 26, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/joining-iqmetrix2010-08-18T23:38:00-07:002010-08-18T23:38:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.iqmetrix.com"><img src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen%20shot%202010-08-18%20at%201.00.34%20AM.png" alt="iQmetrix" /></a></p>
<p>Let’s get straight to the meat of this post: I accepted an offer letter earlier this week, and as of September 1st, I’ll be joining the team at <a href="http://www.iqmetrix.com">iQmetrix</a>.</p>
<p>Now, most of you won’t have heard of iQmetrix. I think they’re going to be known as a great Canadian success story. Here’s a bit of background about the organization.</p>
<p>The company is privately held, around 10 years old, and started in Regina, Saskatchewan. They scratched their own itch at <a href="http://jump.ca">Jump.ca</a> – a wireless retailer AKA store that sells cellphones / mobile plans / accessories etc. – and wrote their own software for CRM, point-of-sale, and so on. The productized version of this became iQmetrix, and they went on to grow until today, there are wireless retailers using the software in every major mall in North America.</p>
<p>So the entire executive team packed their bags back in Saskatchewan, pulled up stakes, and moved out to Vancouver with their families to found the <a href="http://foursquare.com/venue/2217091" title="iQMetrix Vancouver on Foursquare - of course I'm the mayor already">corporate head office</a> here. And now it’s time for iQmetrix to kick into growth mode.</p>
<p>We’re seeing the first non-phone devices like the iPad coming into wireless retailers, and the app store model for software sales is going crazy. There will only be more devices, more accessories, and more things that your wireless retailer will be selling, and that Main Street America will want to know more about.</p>
<p>Is the wireless retailer going to become like the local computer store? Perhaps - that didn’t exactly turn out well. And the story is different in Europe of course, where many countries already have many more wireless retailers or SIM card vendors than we do here.</p>
<p>The other angle that iQmetrix has is around interactive retail. This is another new term to me, and as I’ve been digesting what it means and how to explain it, the analogy I’ve come up with is this:</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-thumb lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/thumb/postimages/20060727-minority_report_gestural_ui.jpg" style="margin: 10px; float: right; " title="" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/31216636@N00/3253842434/in/photostream/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-thumb lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/thumb/postimages/3253842434_b84d76ab72_b.jpg" style="margin: 10px; float: left" title="" /></a></p>
<p>Right now, advertising in the offline world is on a <strong>continuum somewhere between billboards and Minority Report</strong>.</p>
<p>That is, a range of technologies and products from physical billboards and signage in malls and along highways at one end, to the future of personalized, digital, local offers as seen in Minority Report (touch interfaces included, of course) at the other end.</p>
<hr />
<p>At the billboard end, there is relatively boring evolutionary technology like digital billboards that aren’t interactive and are still broadcast. </p>
<p>Closer to the MR, revolutionary end of things, we have personalized, direct offers, with the<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/16/best-buy-shopkick-257-stores/"> recent news of the Shopkick install into Best Buy stores</a> perhaps being one example. Sites like Foursquare and Twitter might be something that we include on the right hand side of the continuum - there is lots of revolutionary change &amp; experimentation happening here (the <a href="http://www.foundrygroup.com/wp/2008/03/theme-human-computer-interaction-hci/" title="Foundry Group Human Computer Interaction investment theme">Foundry Group’s HCI Theme</a> fits in this space).</p>
<p>I think that the current buzz-tag “O2O” (Online 2 Offline) is related - <a href="http://groupon.com">Groupon</a> is held up as one example in a <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/07/why-online2offline-commerce-is-a-trillion-dollar-opportunity/">recent Techcrunch article</a>, but I actually believe this is just a (rising) trend of small businesses adopting technology / advertising solutions that are web-based, and so we are seeing a shift of dollars.</p>
<p>In any case, it should be obvious that I’m excited about the opportunity. I have a lot to learn about this new space, but it feels like an area that is starting a decade long change that mirrors the growth of the web in the mid-90s. I will be bringing some startup, web native, and community experience to the table, and to continue to tell the iQmetrix story.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a href="http://www.codingventures.com/">Kerem Karatal</a> for reaching out to me while I was sitting on the bench after <a href="http://bootuplabs.com">Bootup</a>, and thanks to the exec team at iQmetrix for hiring “title TBD”. I’m looking forward to what we can all accomplish together, and I’m happy to be keeping the Vancouver community as my home base. &lt;/p&gt;
<!-- more -->
And yes, we’re <a href="http://iqmetrix.com/careers">hiring</a>. Want to catch up? I’m at a lot of <a href="http://growconf.com">Growconf</a> events this week, but check my <a href="http://tungle.me/boris">Tungle</a> and <a href="http://plancast.com/boris">Plancast</a> if you want to connect privately or publicly in the coming weeks.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/joining-iqmetrix/">Joining iQmetrix</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 18, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/postrank-has-some-really-great-engagement-analytics2010-08-12T00:00:00-07:002010-08-12T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p>I've played with <a href="http://postrank.com">PostRank</a> in the past (probably back when they were called Aide RSS). They're a Canadian company, based out of Waterloo, founded back in 2007 (<a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/aiderss">CrunchBase entry</a>). They're best known for their "PR" - ranking on blog posts to see if it is important. Since this is similar to what <a href="http://summify.com">Summify is doing with their social news reader</a>, I'm hoping there might be a connection here.</p>
<p>I dived back into it in the last couple of days because I got notification about <a href="https://connect.postrank.com/about">PostRank Connect</a>, which is a brand / influencer connector / tracker (as near as I can tell - it's not really "turned on" at the moment).</p>
<p>But PostRank analytics is what is live now, and it's <strong>great</strong>. Here's a screenshot of the front page of this blog, the default "Overview" tab in PostRank:</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-08-12 at 11.04.34 AM.png" title="" /></p>
<p>The top is the engagement value as tracked by PostRank - comments, tweets, delicious bookmarks, and so on that that post has generated. The bottom are page views from Google Analytics - you click a button, do the OAuth dance, and then connect in your existing Google Analytics account.</p>
<p>Most of the traffic to my blog is organic search from being around for 10 years, so you don't see massive spikes of pageviews correlated to engagement.</p>
<p>Here's another screen shot from the "analyze" tab, which shows you a compact view of posts to your blog, with engagement events and engagement points to give you an overview of how impactful each post is:</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-08-12 at 11.04.55 AM.png" title="" /></p>
<p>If you look carefully, you can see that the Twitter and Delicious links are underlined - you can click through and see more info about who has tweeted / bookmarked your posts. I'd like to see click throughs and info for all of them.</p>
<p>You can see more details about the PostRank Analytics service on the <a href="https://analytics.postrank.com/tour">tour</a> page, where you'll also find that it is $9 / month or $99 / year, although I've been told that with a "Connect" account, you'll get a free Analytics account.</p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<p>The Connect / Brand / Influencer model seems to be hot again: when I heard about<a href="http://www.wmediaventures.com/news/new-investment-empire-avenue-the-worlds-first-influence-stock-market/"> Boris Wertz's investment in Empire Avenue</a>, I spent some time kicking the tires as well. Feel free to <a href="http://www.empireavenue.com/BMANN">buy some shares in ticker symbol BMANN</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/postrank-has-some-really-great-engagement-analytics/">PostRank has some really great engagement analytics</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 12, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/wordpress-is-a-yacht-drupal-is-an-aircraft-carrier2010-08-05T00:00:00-07:002010-08-05T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/features_monster.thumbnail.png" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; " title="" /><a href="http://sonspring.com/journal/why-drupal">Why Drupal?</a> is a great article by designer <a href="http://twitter.com/nathansmith">Nathan Smith</a> on why he's moving to Drupal. He's written a book about <a href="http://textpattern.com/">Textpattern</a>, and used <a href="http://expressionengine.com">Expression Engine</a> extensively, and also mentions <a href="http://typo3.org/">TYPO3</a>.</p>
<p>I've snipped only this very small section on (essentially) why not WordPress, which is similar to what I was trying to get at with my <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CBwQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bmannconsulting.com%2Farchive%2Fevolving-drupal-ux-by-building-products&amp;ei=SN7RU7XjKeWAiwLuroHABw&amp;usg=AFQjCNGmLIEoZcL1HBDXh-2cGjShrPTnwA">Evolving Drupal UX by Building Products</a> post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; ">In fact, WP is so tailored to blogging that I liken it to a yacht. It is streamlined for that particular task. It allows people with varying levels of technical savvy to get a site installed and online posthaste. Or, via&nbsp;</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; "><a href="http://wordpress.com/" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 102, 204); ">WordPress.com</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; ">&nbsp;you can skip the install process altogether and opt for a hosted blog. While a sharp focus on blogging ensures that the famed “5 minute install” will continue to be a selling point, it also means that WP at its core isn’t meant for big sites.</span></p>
<p style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; ">Note: I mean “big” from an&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 102, 204); ">information architecture</a>&nbsp;standpoint. I realize that with proper caching plugins and a good hosting setup WP can power sites with tons of traffic and an abuncance of blog posts. While that’s all well and good, I’m interested in building sites and/or web applications that have both breadth and depth.</span></p>
<p style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; ">Continuing with the WP as yacht analogy, I’d say Drupal is an aircraft carrier. A ship that big can carry fighters, bombers, supplies, or even refugees in a humanitarian relief effort. What I see far too often is people trying to strap things onto their yachts and then wondering why they run into difficulties. Custom fields do not make for an ideal&nbsp;<span class="caps" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; ">CMS</span>&nbsp;workflow. I learned this with Textpattern.</span></p>
<p style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 12px; ">from <a href="http://sonspring.com/journal/why-drupal">Why Drupal? by Nathan Smith at SonSpring.com</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nathan has done a great job by unpacking what "scales well" means from a design perspective. His side trip(s) into discussing major Drupal shops and focusing on a base language like PHP instead of template lingots are excellent as well.</p>
<p>Nathan doesn't mention <a href="http://drupal.org/project/features">Features</a>, but it is a path forward for small or large Drupal shops to avoid having to "just" skin another Drupal site, without moving in the direction of templates.</p>
<p><em>Image for this post is the <a href="http://drupal.org/node/820920">Features monster by Development Seed</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/wordpress-is-a-yacht-drupal-is-an-aircraft-carrier/">WordPress is a yacht, Drupal is an aircraft carrier</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 05, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/android-developers-in-vancouver2010-08-05T00:00:00-07:002010-08-05T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p>I continually get asked for recommendations for developers who can do Android development here in Vancouver.</p>
<p>I love the <a href="http://nitobi.com">Nitobi team</a>, who are development experts across all platforms, and also the brains behind the cross-platform <a href="http://phonegap.com">Phonegap</a> project. But, they tend to be busy with global clients.</p>
<p>So, if you're an Android developer, please fill out the form below. Once I've got a couple of listings, I'll put together a public directory of local Android freelancers and development shops.</p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://bmannca.batchbook.com/lists/form/3620" width="640"></iframe></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/android-developers-in-vancouver/">Android Developers in Vancouver</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 05, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/were-not-teaching-programming-and-we-should-be2010-08-01T00:00:00-07:002010-08-01T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<blockquote>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; ">One of the things I talk about with everyone I meet at NYU if they're willing to listen is that we're not teaching programming and we should be. I think every person who graduates with a bachelor's degree should have one semester of programming, just as they should have one semester of journalism.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: right; ">via <a href="http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/01/debugging101.html">scripting.com</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dave Winer talks about some strategies for building a tech center. I agree with him on programming, or perhaps technical literacy. Just like journalism would teach many skills around critical thinking, writing, and so on.</p>
<p>Computer Science, of course, is not actually a programming degree. Depending on which institution you go to, it will lean more towards math &amp; algorithms or towards a software engineering direction.</p>
<p>I ended up knowing how to program with my computer science degree from UVic, but I learned more during my co-op terms and afterwards on my own time about the craft of programming.</p>
<p>And that's the problem: we haven't decided whether programming is something technicians do (and thus, not taught at university), that engineers do (not yet enough predictability or bridge-building-like stability, I would say), or simply math &amp; algorithms (the current state of computer science).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/were-not-teaching-programming-and-we-should-be/">We're not teaching programming and we should be</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 01, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/elephants-like-community-roi-too2010-08-01T00:00:00-07:002010-08-01T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p>Steve Parks wrote an <a href="http://drupalradar.com/elephants-are-coming">article over at Drupal Radar</a> about "elephants" (aka large global IT / services / consulting) shops like Capgemini starting to adopt Drupal and what that means for smaller shops.</p>
<p>Jo Wouters from <a href="http://krimson.be">Krimson</a> left a comment that made a couple of good points. The first part of his comment was that adopting Drupal is a strategic choice, where community was part of the value of adopting Drupal in the first place. I'm quoting the last bit of his comment directly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some anecdotal evidence: we are working on a proof of concept for one of the elephants. The spreadsheet they provide us to calculate budgets, has fields for all traditional costs (debugging, project management, contingency, …) and<strong> for this project they added an extra field with the label “Community 10%”</strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right; ">via <a href="http://drupalradar.com/elephants-are-coming#comment-36">drupalradar.com by Jo Wouters, Krimson</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(emphasis mine)</p>
<p>Budgeting for "community" is absolutely the right thing to do. I've spoken for years about the concept of "Community ROI" (return on investment).</p>
<p>It's very much the language of business - that investing in the community will see a return. Many from the community side find the language of business problematic - we do this because we love it. I've tried to be more pragmatic: having a sustainable business means that you can be funded to continue to do the things you love. In any case, it's clear that these strategic decisions see the value of the community, and see the return in investing in it.</p>
<p>There are, of course, many shops that don't contribute to Drupal. Sorry, writing case studies doesn't cut it - I'm looking for links to patches, module maintainership, contributing handbook documentation, and so on. That, and as <a href="http:http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/being-involved-in-the-issue-queue-as-a-normal-part-of-development/">I just wrote</a>, actively contributing patches back as part of the client development process. I honestly believe that any shop that doesn't follow community practices as part of developing a site is doing their client a disservice.</p>
<p>Of course, if you don't have experience doing this, it can be hard to get started. Especially, it can be hard to "sell" to clients. One concept I've been tossing around is a line item labeled "Platform Maintenance". If your shop absolutely can't get past the mental hurdle of selling community involvement, then explain to clients that you add (some percentage / some hours) in order to keep their website future proof, secure, more maintainable, etc. Take this time and follow best practices for patching / features for contrib as part of development. Take the time and bundle a module or feature and post it to Drupal.org (the client gets a sponsored by link on the page -- Drupal being a high traffic website, this counts for a lot).</p>
<p>Back to the elephants. We've been lucky to build a critical mass of community <strong>before</strong> larger players arrived. The Drupal community has always been an ecosystem. There are larger players and smaller players, but we all orbit around the Drupal.org community space. The actions of Capgemini and others are showing that they are stepping up to be part of the ecosystem, which is fantastic. It means, for smaller players, that they need to step up their game when it comes to business planning and other aspects that many have just "grown into".</p>
<p>I'm interested in how you / your shop "sell" Drupal community and/or open source. Many shops have a standard "what is Drupal / why is it awesome", but it tends to focus on features or perhaps low cost. What are the specific open source points that you sell? How do you budget it - do you just work it into your cost, or show line items to clients?</p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<p>Related to this discussion, I recommend reading <a href="http://blogs.the451group.com/opensource/">The 451 Group blog on enterprise open source</a>. I also really like <a href="http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2010/05/open-source-communities-and-customers-in-pictures.html">Stephen Walli's post on Open Source Communities and Customers in Pictures</a>. I've included Stephen's final graphic on how community and sales pipeline for enterprise customers interact:</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2010/05/open-source-communities-and-customers-in-pictures.html"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/BetterDetail.gif" title="" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/elephants-like-community-roi-too/">Elephants like community ROI too</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 01, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/applications-found-while-not-finding-a-real-web-design-application2010-08-01T00:00:00-07:002010-08-01T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/a-real-web-design-application/">Jason Santa Maria wrote a long post called A Real Web Design Application</a>, where he talks about searching for a tool that has the creativity of Photoshop with more of a native understanding of the web. It's a good read, and the comments are over 250 and counting.</p>
<p>I remember talking about how Dreamweaver is dead as part of my <a href="http:http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/web-directions-north-2008-3-stages-of-dynamic-systems-wrap-up/">3 Stages of Dynamic Systems talk at Web Directions North 2008</a>. And yet, just the other day I met with someone that was doing a content-based startup and had built hundreds of pages with Dreamweaver templates.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Today, I tend to still reach for&nbsp;<a href="">OmniGraffle</a>&nbsp;for prototyping, site maps, and so on. On the other end of things, I'm still using a basic text editor for coding (<a href="">Smultron</a>). I love the team at&nbsp;<a href="">Balsamiq</a>, but I just haven't been able to get over my distaste for AIR apps. I don't use Photoshop, because I'm design-disabled :P</p>
<p>In any case, I found two interesting tools in the comment thread that might at the very least be Dreamweaver killers.</p>
<p><!--break--></p>
<p>I'm still interested in a "tool" that will make it easy for all those people using static-HTML-making desktop apps to switch to working with web apps like WordPress, Drupal, etc. (static HTML.... why? why??! <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=khaaaaan">KhAAAAAAANNNNN!</a>)</p>
<p>The first is <a href="http://www.theescapers.com/flux/">Flux</a>. The front page does, indeed, have a quote calling it a Dreamweaver killer. I was immediately intrigued by the fact that it has "plugins". These are standard JavaScript libraries and effects bundled in a special packaging format so they can be handled by the WYSIWYG editor / inspector. Wait… a tool thingie that uses the same libraries we use all the time when hand coding? Great!</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.theescapers.com/flux/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-08-01 at 8.14.13 PM.png" title="" /></a></p>
<p>I poked around the Flux forums a bit and didn't find anything about CMS support other than <a href="http://www.theescapers.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=1386">a thread where everyone asks them to support their favourite CMS</a>. A link found there talks about some of the <a href="http://foundationphp.com/blog/2010/04/12/dreamweaver-cs5-is-good-news-for-php-devs/">code abilities in Dreamweaver CS5 over at foundationphp.com</a>.</p>
<p>The second tool is <a href="http://www.antetype.com">Antetype</a>. This is definitely much more in the direction of a prototype builder, and not exclusively targeted at only web design. It's not publicly available yet, but the widget libraries and web viewer export make it very intriguing. More of a potential OmniGraffle replacement than anything to do with HTML.</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.antetype.com"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-08-01 at 8.13.36 PM.png" title="" /></a></p>
<p>So, will a code editor grow design abilities or will a design tool grow code abilities? I see what Jason is looking for as a design-centric tool that can manipulate chunks of code as objects tied to design elements, with of course CSS abilities for applying styling to text across projects (aka cascading, of course).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/applications-found-while-not-finding-a-real-web-design-application/">Applications found while not finding a real web design application</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on August 01, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/being-involved-in-the-issue-queue-as-a-normal-part-of-development2010-07-31T00:00:00-07:002010-07-31T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/drumm/1427977653/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-thumb lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/thumb/postimages/1427977653_fee7de8eca_d.jpg" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; float: right; " title="" /></a></p>
<blockquote>Patches that we write for drupal.org modules are submitted to the issue queue, and we refer to the patch’s location on drupal.org in the make file. This has made us much better contributors to other people projects as it makes being involved in the issue queue a normal part of development, and it encourages us to only patch contrib modules where it’s likely that the patch will be accepted. When a patch gets a review, we make changes, upload a newer version of the patch to drupal.org, and update our make file.</blockquote>
<p>via <a href="http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/jul/27/drush-make-files-production-drupal-sites">developmentseed.org</a></p>
<p>This is actually a quote from <a href="http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/jul/27/drush-make-files-production-drupal-sites#comment-5288">Jeff in the comments on the article Drush Make Files for Production Drupal sites</a>, but I thought it was definitely worth highlighting on its own.</p>
<p>In this particular case, using make files actually codifies the decision to integrate closely with contrib modules and actively improve them / add features as needed for a particular project.</p>
<p>I've followed this practice for years, albeit without make files. Patches go in a "patches" directory in version control, with the patch file named with both the name of the module and the node number of the issue on Drupal.org.</p>
<p>An additional process is that if a patch is needed, you run it in the issue queue on Drupal.org, but you also have an internal ticket that links to that issue. You don't close the issue until the patch has been accepted into the mainline of the module. Then you can remove the patch, update the version of the module you're using, and your clients' website is one step closer to easier long term maintenance and updates.</p>
<p>And yes, being involved in the issue queue SHOULD be a normal part of developing Drupal websites.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/being-involved-in-the-issue-queue-as-a-normal-part-of-development/">Being involved in the issue queue as a normal part of development</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on July 31, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/pei-visitors-from-silicon-valley2010-07-21T00:00:00-07:002010-07-21T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.thegreatgeorge.com/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-07-21 at 10.40.17 AM.png" title="" /></a></p>
<p>Had a great breakfast at the Great George Hotel. You sit in armchairs and sofas in the lobby and have little tray tables in front of them. Standard "continental" breakfast - toast, yogurt, and some hot quiches.</p>
<p>As I sat down, I walked into the middle of a discussion by two women about different types of careers that you can "go to school for", and pick directly (vs. ending up in a job/career through circumstance). They talked about engineering and becoming a lawyer and mentioned computer science, but then also talked about how artists and musicians often end up in computer science.</p>
<p>Turns out they were visiting as part of a group getaway from Silicon Valley. Mainly for golfing, but they were part of the "non golfing" spouses. I told them about some of the speaking I would be doing while I was here, and quizzed them a bit about Yelp and so on.</p>
<p>My take away from the discussion was that there is lots of desire for more information about building for the web. They definitely did use "technology" to do research and so on before coming, but their next step was to ask the front desk about certain things. Good old word of mouth.</p>
<p>They had heard of the <a href="http://www.tourismpei.com/regis-kelly-pei">Regis &amp; Kelly shows on PEI</a> that had happened a week ago, but their decision to come was before that (and they were glad that they were potentially missing a wave of visitors who were inspired by watching the shows).</p>
<p>I talked a little bit about building websites. One of the women shared a story about a non profit she was involved with getting a website built for $500. I tried to have a discussion about what the needs of the website were, but mainly just got to talking about how it should be "easy to use" and that they could update it themselves (and that the "donate" button worked!)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/pei-visitors-from-silicon-valley/">PEI: Visitors from Silicon Valley</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on July 21, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/tv-watching-vs-time-to-create-wikipedia2010-07-20T00:00:00-07:002010-07-20T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p><a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/cognitive-surplus-visualized/#"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="http://bmannconsulting.com/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/goggle_boxes.png" title="" /></a></p>
<p>from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/cognitive-surplus-visualized/#">informationisbeautiful.net</a>&nbsp;(via <a href="http://twitter.com/MackFlavelle ">@MackFlavelle</a>)</p>
<p>Just &hellip; wow. <a href="http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/cognitive-surplus-visualized/#">David McCandless</a> visualizes a year of TV watching by US adults vs. 100 million hours to create Wikipedia, based around the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594202532/?tag=titb-20">Clay Shirky notion of cognitive surplus</a>.</p>
<p>Now let&#39;s add the hours that kids spend watching TV, and what they might create.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/tv-watching-vs-time-to-create-wikipedia/">TV watching vs. time to create Wikipedia</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on July 20, 2010.</p>http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/arrived-in-pei-visited-casa-mia-cafe2010-07-20T00:00:00-07:002010-07-20T00:00:00-07:00Boris Mannhttp://www.bmannconsulting.comboris@bmannconsulting.com
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.tourismpei.com/"><img alt="" class="imagecache-fullpost lightbox" src="/sites/bmannconsulting.com/files/imagecache/fullpost/postimages/Screen shot 2010-07-21 at 10.13.14 AM.png" title="" /></a></p>
<p>I'm going to try and keep a few short notes in my asides section on this trip to PEI.</p>
<p>This was my first "red eye" traveling in North America. That is, I intentionally chose an overnight flight as opposed to Europe, where you're usually losing a day in some way because of the time change.</p>
<p>PEI is Atlantic time (4 hours time difference from Pacific), so leaving at 11:30pm from Vancouver on Monday night meant that I got here around 10:30am on Tuesday morning after a transfer in Montreal.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how I feel about the overnight flight -- spending a whole day flying (once you add in the 4 hours you lose) isn't great, so I decided to use that "wasted" time overnight, making sure that I still had a day to get rested before I started my events here.</p>
<p>In any case, I made it safe and sound if a little groggy and emerged into the sunlight on the tarmac of the Charlottetown airport. It's a small airport where you walk off the plane and directly into the arrivals / exit. I got set up with a rental car and made the short drive to town.</p>
<p>My hosts are putting me up at the Great George Hotel -- some times also called the Inns on Great George (plural) because it's a number of separate buildings with different kinds of apartments and rooms. The person at the front desk ("Frankie", which somehow smacks of PEI) led me 2 blocks from the lobby to where I would be staying. I've got a kitchen, so I might see about getting fresh ingredients and putting a meal together while I'm here.</p>
<p>Aside from having a long nap and doing some work on my presentations, I did make it to <a href="http://casamiacafe.ca/">Casa Mia Cafe</a>, the <a href="http://bmannconsulting.com/2882/social-media/bluetooth-lastfm-making-caf%C3%A9-react-its-customers-ruk-cc-rtanglao-termie">Bluetooth scanning cafe of legend</a>. It had an entry on Yelp, but no reviews, so I <a href="http://www.yelp.ca/biz/casa-mia-cafe-charlottetown">wrote one</a> about my lunch + coffee. <a href="http://twitter.com/ruk/status/19010864988">Peter Rukavina confirmed that I was scanned by the system</a> while I was there, so I'm glad to have checked that off my list. Sadly, no message pushed to my phone or other acknowledgment.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com/archive/arrived-in-pei-visited-casa-mia-cafe/">Arrived in PEI, visited Casa Mia Cafe</a> was originally published by Boris Mann at <a href="http://www.bmannconsulting.com">Boris Mann</a> on July 20, 2010.</p>